Forever Knight [Harmione]

Chapter 29: Decieved

War is a period of armed conflict between two opposing ideologies, which can involve nations, states, federations or, perhaps in its smallest scale, organizations.  There is death.  There is destruction, and most of all, there is division.  But apart from a mind’s understanding of war, the individual experience of it strikes one’s heart and soul.  When one is in the middle of a war, and not merely watching it from the outside, one realizes that death, destruction and division bleeds from the very people closest to you. 

The realization that war tears from the very hearts of the ones involved in it and then outwards is a true testament that war isn’t just about armies, strategies, weapons and political cunning; it is, most importantly, about people, families, and loved ones. 

A brother could die; a mother could be heartbroken; a child could be lost; a family could be irreparably shattered. 

Harry had watched Ron bury one brother and lose hope for the other; had seen women and men die while their friends, family or even just their comrades, wept over their bodies.  He had held the woman he loved as her life blood spilled, the future they could have once had, fading forever beneath its crimson pool. 

In times of war, life runs uncertain.  Plans are precarious; principles are compromised; fear taints the most simple of pleasures; loss is an inevitability. 

It was something Harry had learned to live with everyday of his life, longer than Wizards his age has had to endure.  Since his third year in Hogwarts, he knew that war wasn’t just a battle he could watch from a distant field.  War was with him while he was in school; while he slept; while he laughed in Hogsmead; while he played Quidditch.  The rest of Wizard-kind only began to acknowledge the existence of it in his fifth year, and the handful that did take action only did so because they’d known the horrors of war more intimately than their more insulated fellowmen. 

And so now, in Viktor Krum’s home, the ravages of war have begun to bleed where once the snowy peaks, isolated towns and magnificent castle walls were enough to keep it away.  Now, Viktor Krum found his heart torn, his convictions stifled and his integrity put to the harshest of tests because love for his children and even his siblings had given him no leeway for much else. 

His sister had his sons, kept from him these last few months in a location Viktor knew not of.  His brother had refused him visiting rights to his own children, and his only proof that they were alive was the blessedly un-checked box labeled “Deceased” on their enchanted Civil Certificates in the Bulgarian Hall of Records.

Harry stood by the window of Viktor’s study, the sun not quite ready to set over Bulgaria. The sky bore the unique taint of impending sunset, the pinks, oranges and blues just about creeping on the edges of white light where it would later bleed and blend together into purple, then grey and finally black.  To some people it signified the end of the day.  To Harry, especially five years ago when Hermione had been newly turned, it was in a lot of ways only the beginning. 

“Harry should have better things to look forward to than the coming of sunset,” Hermione had told Ron that night she left.

He smiled to himself.  What was so bad about night, anyway? 

Just like daylight, only… well, darker. 

Chuckling, he turned from the window to look at the items on Viktor’s desk.  There were parchments and quills, magical desktop toys and of course a snitch in a glass globe.  And then there were the pictures. 

There were only two of them, right where Viktor could look up from scribbling on his parchment to see it.  The children were, as Viktor had said, still too young to run about, but they were strong like their father, perhaps, and they were nimbly crawling on their knees and hands, laughing and grinning toothlessly at their mobile toys and mini-snitches.